Old Church Life in ScotlandLecture
VI.—Church Discipline in Olden Times

Censures—Rebukes—Sometimes
in private and sometimes before Congregation— Delinquent sometimes stood
in his own seat—Sometimes in the public place of Repentance—Sometimes in
his usual clothing and sometimes in sackcloth— Repeated compearances for
rebuke, called a course of repentance—Cautioners for compearance and for
subsequent conduct—Bands for good behaviour— Disuse of cutty
stool—Excommunication—Corporal and pecuniary punishment—Session Bailies—Joggs—Fines—Warnings—Deference
paid to Kirk Sessions—Cases of Disrespect and Disobedience—Aid of
Magistrate needed— Insolence to the Session—State of Parochial morality
at different dates— Street fight in Mauchline between a merchant and a
lawyer, with the Bailie looking on—Village Rowdyism—Poosie Nansie and
her household—Social progress —Causes to which progress is due—Grounds
of hope for the future.

Two lectures have already
been devoted to the Kirk Session as the Parochial court of
ecclesiastical discipline. The first of these lectures was occupied with
an account of the institution and constitution of Kirk Sessions, and of
their modes of inquisition. The second lecture was intended to shew the
scope and extent of the Kirk's jurisdiction, or in other words the
different kinds of offences that Kirk Sessions took cognisance of in
olden times. In this lecture we have to consider the several forms of
censure and punishment that Kirk Sessions either directly inflicted or
caused to be inflicted, and the measure of respect in which the
authority of Kirk Sessions was held by the community.

Rebuke was always part of
the Session's censure. And rebuke was administered in different ways.
Sometimes it was administered in private, that is in presence of the
Kirk Session only. But in some cases when it was administered in private
it was afterwards publicly announced from the pulpit. At other times
when the offence was of a heinous character, or had been aggravated by
repetition or other circumstances, the rebuke was delivered in face of
the congregation. And old Session Records shew, what is not generally
known to have been the fact, that in old times (say from 1600 to 1650 or
a little later) public rebukes were administered in three different
ways, according to the amount of scandal created by the offence.
Sometimes the delinquent stood up in his own seat, made confession of
his sin, and was reprimanded. At other times he had to present himself
in front of the pulpit for admonition. And when the scandal was great he
had to mount an elevated stand, technically designated the public place
of repentance, and commonly called the repentance stool. In later times
this threefold classification of public rebukes was not observed. Public
censures came to be more and more confined to the graver class of
offences, and the subjects of such censures had generally, if not
always, to stand in the public place.

In one of his letters
written on a Sunday morning in July, 1786, Burns states that he was that
day going to put on sackcloth and ashes in Mauchline church—not
literally, for his offence did not require such an amount of
degradation—but metaphorically in the sense of humbling himself in
public. But he adds, " I am indulged so far as to appear in my own
seat."

[As I was in the act of
revising this lecture, I was honoured with a visit from an American, who
said he was informed that I possessed the cutty stool on which Burns
stood before the congregation of Mauchline, and he was curious to see
such an interesting relic of a great man ! ! I asked if he himself was a
poet, but he said No!

A collector of local
traditions about Burns (Rev. Dr. Pollock, Kingston, Glasgow), wrote in
1859 that some wiseacres in Mauchline took it into their heads that it
would be a grand "spec" to have an assortment of snuffboxes made out of
the old Repentance Stool, " associated as it had been with a solemn
event in the history of the Poet." Adam Armour, a brother of Mrs. Burns,
accordingly got possession of the stool, but it was found so worm-eaten
that it was good for nothing. In point of fact, however, Burns never had
to sit on the Mauchline Repentance stool.]

And Burns correctly
describes his permission to stand in his own seat as an indulgence. Had
he lived and sinned a century, or even half a century, earlier, it is
doubtful if any such concession would have been made to him. It was
about 1736 that favours of this kind began to be extended in Mauchline
Parish to sinners of Burns's type, and at that time the allowance of the
favour, together with a narrative of the circumstances under which it
was voted, was specially recorded in the Session minutes. For instance,
on the 2nd May, 1736, it was minuted that the minister, Mr. Maitland,
informed the Session that a man "had spoke with him and proposed to give
six pounds Scots to the poor, and stand in his father's seat twice." The
Session, it is then added, did, after reasoning on this tempting
proposal, agree that the man " should appear two days in his father's
seat," and pay a penalty of ten shillings sterling. This was not
precisely what the man offered ; but after a little haggling the Session
modified their terms, and allowed the man to expiate his offence to the
Church by the payment of £6 Scots, and penance in his father's seat
twice, that is forenoon and afternoon, on one Sabbath. In 1698 a small
laird in Mauchline Parish had the hardihood to make trial of the
Session's squeezability. He represented his desire to be relieved of a
scandal he lay under, but "refused to goe to the pillar, pretending that
he had made a promise against it." His alleged conscientious scruples
were disregarded, however, by the Session, and the "laws of the Church"
were explained to him. Two months later the Session recorded that the
laird had repeatedly shifted them with frivolous excuses and contumacies
which they would no longer tolerate. It was therefore agreed that he
should be formally cited "to compear on the common place of repentance
against the next Lord's day." The laird did not make his appearance next
Sabbath as required, and the officer complained that in serving the
Session's citation he had been "mocked and flouted" by the laird. This
was voted contempt of court, and the laird was handed over to the tender
mercies of the civil magistrate. [In 1698 a schoolmaster applied to the
Presbytery of Ayr for leave to stand in his own seat when undergoing a
public admonition, but he was ordered to go to the public place of
repentance.]

The practice of Kirk
Sessions in the matter of censures was never at any period uniform all
over the Church. What is expedient has sometimes to be considered as
well as what is lawful. And expediency is a matter on which there will
always be differences of opinion. While the Kirk Session of Mauchline in
1698 thought it very expedient that stubborn purse-proud people should
be brought to their senses, the Kirk Session of Fenwick about the same
date thought it more expedient to give way to the stiff humours of
mulish parishioners. In 1692 they minuted a resolution regarding a man
accused of using profane language, that "he being of a stiffe proud
humour should only be rebuked before the Session." But this ill-judged
leniency, as might have been foreseen, emboldened other sinners to
assume high and proud airs, and not long afterwards the Session had to
minute regarding a different offender that " considering the bad humour
of the said Robert," his sentence was deferred.

One of a score of
complaints given in to the Presbytery of Ayr against the minister of
Maybole in 1718 was his "conniving at scandals in allowing some persons
secret unusual corners to appear in, though people of the very commonest
sort, without minding something to the poor in such a case." This
complaint implied that the Parishioners of Maybole would have had no
objection to dispensations from the repentance stool provided that the
persons so indulged had been made to suffer somewhat more in penalty for
the good of the poor. And that was the feeling in Mauchline Kirk Session
in 1736. But in 1766 a Mauchline man wished to draw the Kirk Session a
little farther out. He offered a handsome present to the poor, if the
Session would release him from appearing before the Congregation at all.
That offer, however, was rejected by Mr. Auld as being overmuch
mercantile in its character, and the man was ordered to satisfy the
Church in public as other offenders in the like condemnation did.

I have said that it was
customary, during at least the first half of the seventeenth century, to
allow some offenders, whose scandals were not of the grossest, to do
public penance in their own seats. Instances of this are to be found in
the Session records both of Fenwick and Galston. In 1650 a Galston dame
was delated to her Session for " raileing on ye Ladie Barr, cursing,
swearing, and divilish passione." She had the candour to confess all she
was charged with, and she was ordained to give "signs of repentance out
of her awin seatt the next Lorde's day," with certification that "the
first tyme she sould be fund in the lyk sche sould stand Jieich? Other
offenders, I said, had to appear in front of the pulpit for public
rebuke. At one period this was the common place for the repentance
stool. Mr. Morer states that in the beginning of last century the usual
position of " the stool or bench of penance was under the precentor's
desk." But it was not so always. It had once a higher elevation. And
during the period that the church "pillar" was the conspicuous object in
church, there were some favoured offenders that were allowed to stand "laigh,"
and be rebuked in front of the pulpit. In 1644 there was a slanderer in
Galston ordained "to give signs of his grieff at the pulpit foot the
next Sabbath day, because he war anc auld man." In 1676, a man who had
been convicted of mending his sack on a Sunday, was appointed by the
same Session to be publicly rebuked "in the body of the kirk near the
pulpit." And in 1693 we read of a young couple in Galston, who had been
married under a cloud, and for that scandal were made to stand several
days "in a place before the pulpit'': not the public place, but a place
just a little less public. [As far back as 1583 the General Assembly
appointed Mr. David Russell, bailie of St. Andrews, for calling the
Presbytery a "rabble," and using other "outrageous words," to appear
"before the pulpit, in the paroche Kirk of St. Androis, before noon,
after the sermon, and immediately before the prayer," and there make
confession that he had "heavily of Tendit his God and sclandent the
haill Kirk of God within this realme." Hook of Univ. Kirk.]

The place, however, where
delinquents had commonly to stand when undergoing public rebuke, was
what was called the repentance stool. The expression stool is apt to
convey to the modern reader an erroneous impression, as if it were a
tall, three-legged seat like what lawyers' clerks are perched on at the
present day. Neither in structure nor situation were repentance stools
always of one pattern. In the latter days of the old church of Mauchline
the repentance stool, so far as I can learn, was just a common pew, a
little exalted above its neighbours, and situated on the left hand of
the pulpit under the drop of the west gallery. At an earlier period
repentance stools were much more conspicuous objects. They were
generally, if not always, "high places,"' and in old records they are so
designated. The sentence pronounced on Paul Methven by the General
Assembly in 1566 was that he be "planted in the public spectacle above
the people in tyme of sermon," in the Kirk of Edinburgh on two preaching
days. How elevated the public place in Galston church was, may be
inferred from several minutes that appear in the Session records of that
parish. In 1635 "the Session gave libertie to Matthew Ross and John
Walker in Galston to set up ane seat and dask to themselves under the
repentance stools at the north-west kirk doore." In 1675, agam> there
was a delinquent who pled before the same Session "his inabilitie to
stand high in the public place, by reason of a distemper in his head,
and desired humbly that they would allow him to stand laigh in any place
of the church they pleased." [The term by which the public place
of repentance was in very old times commonly designated, was the pillar.
In 1591 it was minuted by the Session of the West Kirk, Edinburgh, that
"John Howisone and John Gairns had agreit for twa hundreth marks to big
ye laft and a pillar for " misdoers. If this pillar was a high and an
unfenced stand we can see how some people, like the Galston man in 1675,
had not nerve enough to mount it.] The Session, it is recorded, acceded
to the man's request and " appointed a chair to be set at the foot of
the stair of the public place the next Lord's day." In Fenwick, also,
the old repentance stool must have been a high place, for in 1674 there
was an order given by the Session of that Parish that one of two
delinquents should stand below and the other in the public place. And
from what is stated in the records of the Presbytery of Ayr, it is
evident that the repentance stool in Monkton Church, both before and
after 1650, was a small gallery "above the kirk doors."

There were some churches
in which the public place of repentance was furnished with different
rooms or stances to indicate different grades of infamy. In the old
Session Records of Perth there is a minute of date 1605 ordaining that
"a more public place of repentance be biggit with all diligence, and in
it certain degrees, that therein offenders may be distinguished and
better discerned both by their place and habit." But the threefold
classification of public rebukes already described superseded the
necessity in Ayrshire of "degrees" in the place of repentance. Some
offenders were made to " stand hcich," others were allowed to "stand
laigh." Some that "stood laigh" had to do so in front of the pulpit, and
others were allowed to do so at their usual place of sitting. In all
churches, however, the gravity of a man's offence was indicated by the
dress in which he appeared for rebuke. As a rule, people came up for
admonition in their very best church clothes, but in cases of grievous
scandal they were required to appear in sackcloth or linen sheets. An
entry in our Session Records shews that in Mauchline there was in 1686 a
sum of £2 5s. expended on "harn to be a sackcloth and the making of it."
In 1748 another sackcloth was got and the making of it costal 13s. 6d.
The discontinuance of sackcloth as a penitential garb is nowhere that I
remember referred to in our Session Records, and it is certain that as
recently as 1781 an offender appeared in Mauchline Church in that
dishonoured and uncomfortable habiliment. In Galston there were at least
two robes of shame, and in 1676 two sinners were appointed to appear in
Galston Church, "the one with the sackcloth gown and the other with the
sheets." But whether there was much difference in the infamy of these
respective dresses is not made clear. In 1626 a Galston damsel appeared
"in the publict place of repentance with ane uthcr habite than was
enjoined to her be the Session," and therefore for this act of
disobedience she was " ordainit to apcir the next day in sackcloth or in
ane window claith."

And whether arrayed in
window claith or sackcloth, or attired in their best silks and broad
cloth, it was not once only that offenders had to appear in public. They
were appointed to undergo what was termed "a course of repentance." The
minimum number of compearances required in the case of particular
offences was specified in acts of the General Assembly, but when there
was no satisfactory sign of humiliation and penitence the compearance
was ordered to be continued longer.* And Kirk Sessions were very chary
in accepting professions of repentance. In 1708 Mr. Maitland reported to
the Session of Mauchline that a certain person under scandal, and with
whom he had been appointed to converse, shewed "some seeming sense of
sin with some small knowledge." This was not thought sufficient to
warrant absolution, and the delinquent was therefore appointed to submit
to another admonition. The same year a young married couple were ordered
to submit to rebuke one day in public and " to ly under the rebuke for
some time until their walk appear more suitable after their sin." In
1693 an ill doer in this Parish was continued under scandal for several
months, although she had previously stood publicly in the church in
sackcloth for nine several Sabbaths! In 1749 a roguish shoemaker in the
village had the effrontery or the satirical humour, it is hard to say
which, to apply to the Session for a certificate of good behaviour. The
shoemaker, however, brought coals of fire on his head by this
presumptuous petition, for the minister informed the elders that the
petitioner had been guilty of "undutiful carriage towards him (Mr. Auld)
in time of catechising and visiting." The Session thereupon authorised
the minister to grant the shoemaker such a testimonial as an undutiful
member of the congregation deserved. That would just have been a
certificate of impudence. But no sooner had this dry courtesy been
condescended on than something else came unexpectedly to the Kirk
Session's ears. Information was lodged that the son of Crispin had not
only been disrespectful to his minister but had been guilty of gross
insolence to his own mother ; and when this report was investigated it
was found that the shoemaker had repeatedly cursed the old lady with
horrid imprecations, and had on one occasion aggravated the offence by
committing it on a Sabbath day. Instead of a dainty testimonial,
therefore, the shoemaker was provided with a seat on the repentance
stool for four successive Sabbaths, and got the benefit of an admonition
from the pulpit in face of the congregation.

As affording a sample of
rigorous discipline, the following minute from the records of the
Presbytery of Ayr may be quoted. The date of the minute is 1643, and the
sin confessed was a heinous breach of the Seventh Commandment. "Compeared
Y Z and confessed .... He was removit and enjoined to return clad in
sackcloth and mak his confession, quhilk he did in humilitie upon his
knies, the Moderator gravelie laying his sinne to his charge by reason
of age and gray haires. He was removit ye second tyme, and returning in
the same habite of sackcloth he was enjoined to give signs of his
unfeigned repentance in the public in his paroch kirk, clad in
sackcloth, and to stand at the kirk door in the same habit of sackcloth
from the second bell to the third, and theirafter to present (him in)
the public place of repentance, and to enter thereinto ye nixt Lord's
day, and to continue from Sabbath to Sabbath after the said order
enjoined, by the space of sex months according to the order of the Kirk
of Scotland." At the end of the six months he appeared before the
Presbytery for absolution, but for vitiating an act of the Kirk Session
of Craigie he was ordered to stand two days more " in the habite of
sackcloth without ane hatt on his head or band about his craig. As also,
that after the same manner he appear at the next meeting of Presbyterie
in Ayr and present himself in the public place of repentance, and that
upon signs of unfeigned penitence he be received by the brether."

A very notable feature in
old processes of discipline was the requirement of certain cautions from
delinquents. These cautions were of two kinds, or more strictly speaking
they were given for two purposes. When people were convicted of scandals
long ago they were not all at once admitted to repentance, as the phrase
was. They had usually to lie under scandal for some time and bemoan
their sins in seclusion from Christian society. After being convicted of
scandal they were required therefore to find a cautioner that they
would, when called upon, appear before the Kirk Session and satisfy the
Church. The following summary of a case that came before the Kirk
Session of Galston in 1643 will give a fair illustration of the usual
form of procedure in matters of discipline during the first forty years
of the 17th century. A. B. and C. D. being "summoned, as suspect of" a
conjoint offence, compeared and acknowledged their guilt. They also "
found E. F. cautioner for them both, that they shall satisfie the Kirk
in penaltie and repentance." The Galston records shew that from 1626 to
1638—that is during the first period of Episcopacy in the Church of
Scotland —this form of procedure in discipline was universal or nearly
so in Galston parish, and presumably therefore in other parishes. In
1633 the Galston Session made their rule absolute anent finding a
cautioner for satisfaction of the kirk, and ordained that whoever
appeared before them and refused to find caution to such effect " should
not be heard till he laid down double penaltie." After 1638 the rule
fell gradually into disuse, and seems to have become within a few years
from that date altogether obsolete in Galston. But in some other parts
of the country it was put in force long after 1638. In the records of
the West Kirk, Edinburgh, for 1687—which, it may be mentioned in
passing) was during the second period of Episcopacy—there are instances
of delinquents finding caution to give "full and complete satisfaction
to the discipline of the Church," and of cautioners being ordered when
the proper time came "to cause the parties compeir within a month after
advertisement, with certification" that if such compearance is not made,
the cautioners shall forfeit the penalty specified in their bonds. It
sometimes happened that parties delated to the Session declined to find
caution for their subsequent compearance, and in such cases they were
taken before the civil court and put under an injunction by the
magistrate to obey the Session's summons. In the burgh records of
Dumbarton, for example, there is an instance recorded in 1628 of a
woman's finding her brother " caution, that sche sail appeir befoir the
ministers, elders, and Sessioun of the kirk onytime they pleiss on aucht
dayis warning, for the spaice of ane half yeir to cum."

[Possibly some people
went of their own accord to the civil magistrate for that purpose,
thinking and thinking rightly that the giving and receiving of caution
were civil acts with which Kirk Sessions as spiritual courts had nothing
to do.

The cautioner was of
course always a friend or relative of the delinquent, but in 1634 there
was a married woman in Galston who "found her husband cautioner for
satisfaction of the kirk."]

Besides finding caution
for compearance before the Session to satisfy the kirk, delinquents had
long ago to find still further caution. After they had undergone rebuke,
and other censure, they were not infrequently required to find security
for good behaviour in future. Many instances of this requirement are to
be found in the old records of Galston. Like the other kind of caution,
however, already described, this form of security fell out of use about
the middle of the 17th century. There is no instance of it so far as I
remember in the extant records of Mauchline Session, which go back to
the year 1669. But, both many and varied were the cases in which this
caution was anciently given. Security was demanded from brawlers that
they would "keip gude neibor-heid" with their adversaries. Security was
in like manner required from Sabbath breakers, that they would remember
the Lord's day to keep it holy. Security had also to be given by
conjoint offenders that they would never meet each other in suspect or
quiet places. It sometimes happened in Galston, as it has happened
elsewhere, that a man's foes were those of his own household, and we
read, therefore, of a man in that strictly disciplined parish who, in
1640, was required to find a "cautioner to observe and keip good order
with his wyffe, and to leive in love with her as God's word doth allow."
There were also in Galston long ago one or two misguided people, who,
either from spiritual indifference or from prejudice against their own
minister, gave up church going, and so we read that in 1628 there was a
woman required by the Session to find caution that she would "keip the
kirk ordinarily every Sabbath, and communicate in our kirk every zeir."
She had probably been an extreme Presbyterian who could not brook the
ritualism of Episcopal services.

Long after the custom of
requiring caution for good behaviour had become obsolete, Kirk Sessions,
when they thought proper, required delinquents to subscribe "bands" in
pledge of their Christian carriage in time coming. These bands, with the
subscribers' names underwritten, were engrossed in the Session Records.
In 1680, for instance, an insubordinate villager was delated to the
Session of Mauchlinc for beating his wife, blaspheming God's name, and
railing against the magistrates of the town. For these insolences and
outrages he was sessionally rebuked, and absolved from scandal, "upon
the condition of his engaging himself by his band and subscription to
carry faire in time coming, under the penalty specified in the said
band." The penalty so specified, it may be stated, was "rebuke in public
before the congregation as often as the Session shall appoint, and over
and above a payment to the Session of £20 Scots money for the use of the
poor in the Parish." Even when Sessions were in the way of demanding
caution for good conduct they sometimes were content to dispense with
the caution and accept parties' own bands. In 1629, two persons,
presumably husband and wife, appeared before the Session of Galston and
"actit and obleist thame, that in cais it beis tryit in any tyme
heirefter that aither of thame beis fundin swearing, or blaspheming of
God's name, or making uther misorder in the house, aither of thame with
uther, than and that cais aither of thame quha contravenis this act to
pay £20 Scots." The shoemaker in Mauchline who insulted the minister and
cursed his mother in 1749 had to sign a resolution of amendment before
he got the benefit of restoration to Church privileges. There was no
stereotyped form in which these bands of good behaviour were draughted,
but the shoemaker's declaration will give a fair sample of the general
strain in which they were written. "I, A. B., shoemaker in Mauchline, do
acknowledge my rude and undutiful behaviour to my minister both in time
of catechising and of visiting. I do also, with deep sorrow of heart,
confess my horrid sin of cursing my mother. It is my earnest desire to
be forgiven by God, whose holy name I have so dreadfully profaned, and
by all of this congregation, those especially whom I have more
immediately offended. And, at the same time, it is my sincere
resolution, through divine grace, which I heartily implore, that I'll do
so no more. And as an evidence of my sincerity, I am willing that this,
my humble confession, be recorded in the Session Book and be adduced
against me as an aggravation of my crime if ever I shall relapse."
Signed A. B. More recent registration of such bands may be found in our
Session Books. Down to the close of Mr. Auld's ministry at least, if not
later, these bands were now and again required in Mauchline.

Besides requiring bands
for good behaviour, Sessions sometimes interdicted sinners from
"conversing together." In 1705 a minister reported to the Presbytery of
Ayr that two of his Parishioners had broken this instruction, whereupon
it was minuted that "The Presbytery being informed that they often
converse together......cause cite them to the next Presbytery that they
may be rebuked for contumacy to their Session's appointment discharging
them to converse." One of the parties affirmed that he was not
contumacious, but that the other came to his house against his mind, and
he kept up no correspondence beyond what "he could in no wise shun." Two
hundred years ago (1674 for instance) the Kirk Session of Fenwick
occasionally inhibited associates in sin from "one another's company
except at kirk and mercat." Similar inhibitions were made in Galston,
and in 1647 two persons were made to pay heavy penalties and stand two
Sabbaths in the public place "for violation of an act of interdiction,"
and were "again interdicted of one another's companies save only in kirk
and mercat."

Whether public
appearances in garbs of sackcloth did or did not humble people with
godly sorrow two hundred years ago is a question about which there may
be two opinions, but it may be confidently asserted that at the present
day such compearances would all the more harden the hearts of one class
of offenders and utterly break the spirits of another, while at the same
time it would demoralise the public mind by turning sin and scandal into
a matter of mirth and mockery. It was not, however, till the year 1809
that public compearances for rebuke were abolished in this parish,
during the ministry of Mr. Tod, and it may interest some people to be
told that this important change in our parochial discipline was brought
about by Mr. Thomas Miller, younger, of Glenlee, who was at that time a
member of the Mauchline Kirk Session.

But although it was so
long before public rebukes were discontinued in Mauchline there was a
somewhat memorable protest made against them nearly seventy years before
their abolition. This protest was made by a hoary headed sinner, whose
name need not be divulged. He seems to have occupied a good social
position, and to have had cultured notions on some things. But every now
and again he fell under scandal, and times beyond number he was cited to
appear before the Kirk Session. For a long while he disregarded or
evaded these citations, and the more he worried and outwitted the
Session the more he chuckled and grinned. So unwearied and persistent,
however, were the Session in renewing citations that he felt at length
constrained to come to terms with his tormentors. First of all he tried
the effect of a "partial confession," and when this device failed, he
insisted that if any further acknowledgments were made by him he should
be "treated to a gentlemanly punishment." And for once, in the course of
his foolish life, he spoke wisely, and indicated the true principles on
which Church discipline should be established : for if one of the chief
ends of discipline is to reclaim people from evil ways, it is not by
ridicule or wanton severity, but by love and entreaty, tenderness and
earnest remonstrance, and what might be called Christian
gentlemanliness, that that end must be sought.

Rebukes were, of course,
spiritual sentences, and they were at times accompanied by other
spiritual sentences, such as the lesser or the greater excommunication.
The greater excommunication was a very serious matter. Down to the
revolution it inferred severe civil penalties. By an Act of Parliament
passed in 1573 excommunicated persons might be denounced as rebels and
have their goods poinded. But they seldom were so denounced and
despoiled. Except in the most violent times of civil and ecclesiastical
strife, when passions were abnormally excited, it was rarely that the
sentence of greater excommunication was passed, either with or without
civil penalties. The execution of that sentence, however, was not
altogether unheard of even in rural parishes. There is at least one
instance of it recorded in the Session Registers of Mauchline. It was on
a man who in 1750 had, to use the words of the record, been found guilty
of "cursing his mother in very shocking terms, and otherwise using her
most barbarously," and had also, in addition to these offences, been
guilty of persistent contumacy and contempt of the Church courts. The
cursing of parents, as was shewn in a previous lecture, was not only
considered a very gross form of sin, but by an Act of Parliament passed
in the reign of Charles the Second, it was declared to be a crime worthy
of death. Contumacy, again, is an offence which no constituted Church
can put up with. If allowed, it would undo all authority and frustrate
all discipline. The Presbytery of Ayr, therefore, in the case remitted
to them from Mauchline in 1751 did "unanimously agree that the man be
summarily excommunicated, and appointed Mr. Auld to intimate the said
sentence of the greater excommunication between and next meeting of
Presbytery, when he is to report his diligence." In the records of the
Presbytery of Ayr there is mention made of another sentence of
excommunication that was passed on a Mauchline man. This was in the year
1650, and the offences libelled were incest and disobedience to the
minister, or, in other words, incest and contumacy. [Strictly speaking,
the Parish of Som is entitled to the credit of this incestuous person,
as he hailed from that part of Mauchline Parish which is now, and has
for 200 years been, called Sorn or Dalgain.] As part of the procedure
then customary in such cases the Presbytery ordered the " said
excommunication to be intimated next Sabbath by all the brethren,'' that
is by all the ministers within the bounds, from their respective
pulpits. In the Session records of Galston there is an interesting
account of a process of excommunication instituted in 1638, the year in
which the National Covenant was revived and reframed, against a man
named Mitchell "for not subscryving the covenant, not keiping the kirk,
refusing the communion, and uther faults." Three separate times prayers
were offered for the man, and then he was summoned to appear before the
Presbytery. In the end "he referred himself to the will of the Session,"
and so escaped the extreme sentence of the Church. In his case,
therefore, we have not an account of the full process of excommunication
in those days nor of the process of removing the excommunication. This
latter process, as might be expected, was at one time a very severe
piece of discipline. The General Assembly in 1569-70 ordained that
excommunicated persons not fugitive from the laws, and suiting to be
received by the kirk, should " stand bareheaded at the kirk door every
preaching day betwixt the assemblies, secluded from prayers before and
after sermons, and then enter the kirk and sit in the public place
bareheaded all the time of the sermons, and depart before the latter
prayer." [Previous to 1571 "all adulterers, murtherers, incestuous
persons, and uthers committers of hainous crymes," were required to
present themselves to the General Assembly "to resave their first
injunction," and to return to the following General Assembly "in linen
clothes" and receive a second admonition. It was ordained, however, in
1571, that "as divers of the saids offenders are far distant frae the
places of Generall Assemblies, and uthers for poverty and deidlie feids
may not nor dare not travell through the countrie to present themselves
before the saids Assemblies," all such offenders should in future be
called by Superintendents and Commissioners of Provinces "to compeir
before them in their Synodall conventions, to be halden by them twyse in
the yeir, to receave and take their iujunctions, conforme to the order
usit before the Generall Assemblies in all sorts." In 1588 a further
relaxation of discipline was allowed by the Assembly, and adulterers,
homicides, &c, were permitted to give satisfaction to the Kirk "before
the Presbyteries, in such forme as they were accustomit before the
Synodalls.' -Book of Universal Kirk.]

The sentence of lesser
excommunication meant suspension from the Lord's table, and it was a
matter of not infrequent occurrence. It is not, however, to be
confounded with refusal to grant a token of admission to the Lord's
table. That refusal was extended to all that were under any scandal and
had not made satisfaction to the Kirk Session. But the lesser
excommunication was a special sentence appended to a rebuke. It was
intended to shew that the offence censured was in the eye of the Kirk
Session heinous in character, not to be all at once forgotten, and that
the offender was not fit to be a worthy communicant till a different
spirit came over him. It was a sentence also that had to be publicly
intimated, and one from which relaxation was not to be granted till the
Session were satisfied of the knowledge, seriousness, and reformation of
the persons desiring release.

Besides spiritual
sentences, such as admonitions and excommunications, Kirk Sessions were
in the way long ago of inflicting civil punishments on delinquents.
Indeed it may be said that so interwoven are things civil and things
ecclesiastic, things spiritual and things social, that to be declared
under scandal or to be suspended from the privileges of the Lord's table
is itself a species of social ostracism. And in one of the old minutes
of our Kirk Session, a minute of date 1705, there is to be found a very
apposite expression illustrative of this fact. Two persons "appearing
penitent according to the view of man," were absolved, says the minute,
from their scandal "and received into society again." [The expresbion
"received into the society of the Kirk as a lively member thereof"
occurs in the old deliverances of the General Assembly regarding
absolution from scandal. — Universal Kirk, 45.] But besides the social
degradation that accompanied spiritual sentences, there were civil
punishments expressly imposed on offenders by Kirk Sessions. This
circumstance was made a matter of accusation against the Presbyterians
by Maxwell, Bishop of Ross, in a book called Issachar's Burden, and the
truth of it was vehemently denied by Baillie in his historical
vindication of the government of the Church of Scotland. What Baillie
says is very notable and well worthy of quotation. "No Church assembly
in Scotland," he says, "assumes the least degree of power to inflict the
smallest civil punishment upon any person : the General Assembly itselfe
hath no power to fine any creature so much as one groat. [In the Second
Book of Discipline agreed upon in the General Assembly, 1578, it is
stated that the office of the Christian Magistrate in the Kirk is "to
assist and manteine the discipline of the Kirk, and punish them civilly
that will not obey the-censure of the same, without confounding alwayis
the ane jurisdiction with the uther."] It is true the lav/es of the land
appoint pecuniary mulcts, imprisonment, joggs, pillories, and banishment
for some odious crimes, and the power of putting these laws in execution
is placed by the Parliament in the hands of the inferior magistrates
.... . . . ordinarily some of these civill persons are ruling Elders and
sit with the Eldership : So when the Eldership have cognosced upon the
scandall alone of criminal persons and have used their spiritual
censures only to bring the party to repentance, some of the ruling
Elders, by virtue of their civil office or commission, ["In Boroughs it
was the almost invariable custom to have some of the Elders chosen from
among the Magistrates. This circumstance connected with the nature of
the offences usually tried and the punishments decreed against them by
the legislation, led to that apparent confounding of the two
jurisdictions which is apt to strike those who happen to look into the
ancient records of Kirk Sessions as an anomaly and a contradiction to
the principles of the Presbyterian Church."— M'Crie's Life of Melville,
Vol. L, p. 335.] will impose a mulct or send to prison or stocks, or
banish out of the bounds of some little circuit, according as the Act of
Parliament or Council do appoint it. But that the Eldership should
impose its ecclcsiastick and spiritual power for any such end none of us
doe defend."

According to Baillie, it
is only the civil magistrate that can legally impose any civil
punishment. And we have seen how frequently the Kirk Session of this
Parish referred matters to the civil magistrate in the case of people's
squatting in the Parish without testimonials, or refusing to comply with
the orders of the Church. There was an old Act of Parliament which
empowered Sheriffs of counties to appoint Session bailies in Parishes
that were unblest with any resident magistrate. These Session bailies
were elders that had commission to put certain laws affecting public
morals, such as the laws against profaneness, into execution. It thus
happened, as Baillie says, that in some cases where Kirk Sessions
imposed spiritual censures an elder in the Session simultaneously
imposed a civil punishment. In 1648 the General Assembly recommended
that use should be made of the Act of Parliament, 1645, "for having
magistrates and justices in every congregation," and that "each
magistrate in every congregation exact and make compt to the Session" of
the sums payable according to Act of Parliament for the several offences
liable to fine. And how the Act of Parliament and the Act of Assembly
were sometimes executed will be seen from the following extract from the
Burgh Records of Glasgow in 1649. At a meeting of Town Council that year
it was agreed that appointment be made to certain persons "quha ar upon
the Session, that they, in absence of the present magistratis, have
commission to exerce the civille power requirit against delinquentis and
uthers lyable to censure that come before that judicatories In the
Session Records of Mauchline there is no reference, so far as I have
observed, to any magistrate under the designation of Session bailie, but
that there were Session bailies in many parishes in Ayrshire both in the
seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries is beyond doubt. In 1698 an
order was minuted by the Presbytery of Ayr that " each minister in the
Presbytery is to use his endeavours to have a magistrate in their Paroch
elected by the Session, having deputation from the Sheriff according to
law." The Synod of Glasgow and Ayr about the same date or shortly
afterwards passed an ordinance to the same effect, and in 1700 this Act
was read in the Presbytery of Ayr, and each of the members of Presbytery
was severally asked whether there were Session bailies in his Parish or
not. The minutes of Presbytery state that most part of the ministers
reported that they had such magistrates in their Parishes, and those who
had them not were enjoined to do what they could to get magistrates in
their Sessions appointed. [In the records of Fenwick Parish there are
several notices of the election of "a Civil magistrate for concurring
with the Session to the bearing down of scandal." The election was made
by the Heritors and Elders, and in one instance at least after the
election was made, a petition was presented to the Earl of Eglincon, "
Bailzie Principal of Cunningham, for a commission" in lavour of the
person chosen to exercise the office. A minute in the Records of Sorn
Parish (printed in Paterson's History of Ayrshire) states that in 1700
Hugh Mitchell of Delgain was, "according to the 31st Act of the present
Session of Parliament," named and chosen magistrate for the Parish to
carry said Act into effect—Sir George Campbell of Cessnock, Sheriff
Principal, having given him full powers.] We have seen how difficult it
was long ago to prevail on people to accept the office of Elder, and
when we consider both the restraints and the labours imposed on Elders
we can understand why there should have been such reluctance. But it
might have been thought that every person in every Parish would have
been ambitious to be made a bailie. Yet it was not so. In 1700 the
minister of Riccarton, at a Presbyterial visitation of his Parish,
reported that "any who were pitched upon would not condescend to be
their Session bailie," and that the Heritors undertook the duty by
course. The reluctance shewn in 1700 by respectable persons in Riccarton
to accept the office of Session bailie seems also to have been found in
some other Parishes, for in December of the same year the Presbytery
thought fit to delay enforcing the Act of Synod about the appointment of
magistrates in Sessions, "till a new Act of Parliament made thereanent
came forth more full, to make the nomination of the magistrates
effectualle." This desired compulsory Act of Parliament never did come
forth, and the difficulty of finding Session bailies increased year
after year. In 1723 the Presbytery of Ayr were again exercised about
this want in their Parochial equipment and a committee of Presbytery was
" appointed to wait on the Earl of Loudoun, principal Sheriff, to try if
he would give a deputation to some fitt person in each Session within
the bounds who have not magistrates in the Paroch already," but his
Lordship told the committee that he had some difficulties in the matter,
and would have to give consideration to these. [In 1717 a deputation
from the General Assembly attended at Court to represent the grievances
of the Church. This deputation "demanded the restoration of those laws
for enforcing the judgments of the ecclesiastical courts by the eivil
power which had been so adroitly cast out of the statute book in the
adjustment of the Revolution settlement. But the statesmen repelled the
proposal with a brief emphasis."—Burton, VIII.
The views of churchmen and statesmen were evidently at that date pretty
wide apart. Hence Lord Loudon's difficulties.] We shall not be far wrong
if we say that this was the date at which the office of Session bailie
practically ceased to be recognised in Ayrshire, and we can understand
why we never read of a Session bailie in Mauchline. There was no need
for one. There was a resident Burgh bailie, and possibly there were
among the heritors other local justices. In a minute of Session in 1696
it is stated that the Session "made application to Netherplace, being
present, as one of their members, that he as Sheriff Depute and
magistrate in the bounds would take notice of the contumacy" of certain
persons named as being under discipline.

There can be no doubt
that whether Kirk Sessions had constituent bailies or not, they did
inflict civil penalties both " pecunial" and corporal. They ordered
fines to be paid for particular offences, and they increased fines at
their own discretion. In very old times the first thing required of
persons charged with scandals was to find a caution that they would
"satisfy the Kirk both in penalty and repentance." The Galston Records
shew that this was the uniform practice in Galston Parish during the
Episcopal times before 1638, and that the practice had not altogether
died out till at least 1644, if not later. So much store too was at one
time set on the penalty, that delinquents were not allowed to declare
their penitence till they had paid their appointed fines. In 1633 some
long-tongued people in Galston were found guilty of slander, and had to
satisfy the Kirk in both the spiritual and civil forms of satisfaction.
The one form of satisfaction, however, had to be given before the other
was accepted, and the delinquents were ordered by the Session "before
they go to the hie place to lay down ye penaltie, ylk is decernit to be
£5, ilk ane of thame." It is very probable that the assumption of civil
power by Kirk Sessions was more common in the Episcopal times before the
second Reformation of 1638 than in Presbyterial times since, but a claim
to the inheritance of Peter's sword as well as Peter's keys was by no
means confined to any Episcopal epoch in the history of the Church of
Scotland. Long after the overthrow of Episcopacy in 1638 we find Kirk
Sessions ordering and ordaining penalties to be paid by transgressors.

The most common form of
corporal punishment that Church Courts in this country inflicted was
confinement for an hour or two in the jougs. These jougs were iron
collars that were put round the necks of delinquents. They were part of
the paraphernalia of every church long ago. Sometimes they were fixed in
a pillar at the church gate, sometimes in a tree in the church yard, and
sometimes in the wall of the church itself, at the side of the principal
door. At Fenwick, the jougs may still be seen dangling on the church
wall about five feet from the ground, and in the old Session Records of
that interesting Parish there are cases to be found of culprits being
appointed to "stand in the joges from eight till ten, and thence go to
the place of repentance within yc kirk." It was only in extreme cases,
however, that Kirk Sessions had recourse to the jougs. In 1661 the
patience of the Kirk Session of Rothesay was sorely tried by an
inebriate member of their congregation, who would not by any amount of
persuasion or rebuke be induced to live soberly. As a last resource the
Session warned her, that "if hereafter she should be found drunk, she
would be put in the joggs and have her dittay written on her face." That
there were jougs in Mauchline as well as in other uncivilised places two
hundred years ago is quite certain, but the only reference to them that
I have observed in the Session Records is an entry of payment of £1 16s.
in 1681 "for a lock to the bregan and mending it." The word bregan, or,
as it is spelt in Jamieson's Dictionary braidyeanc, f was the common
word in Ayrshire for jougs, and the fact that the Mauchline Session were
in 1681 keeping the lock of the bregan in order, is proof that the
bregan was at that date either in use or kept for use when occasion
should require. In the Session Records of Galston there are more
explicit references than in ours to the bregan or bredyane and the
purpose for which it was meant. In 1628 the Session of Galston passed an
Act, that "gif the man fornicator be responsible (that is, have money)
and the woman not, the man shall satisfie for baith, and gif the woman
be responsible and the man not, then and in that caice the woman shall
pey and satisfie for baith. And gif naither the man nor the woman be
responsible, they shall stand twa several Sabbaths in the bradzane and
uther twa days with thair lynning claiths in the public place of
repentance." In 1640 a case occurred in which a poor frail girl was
found by the Session of Galston to be not responsible, and, "not having
silver to pey her penalties, the Sessioune ordainit her to stand in the
bredyane conforme to ane former act maid thereanent." In 1651 the
horrors of the breggan were threatened by the Session of Galston for
what might now-a-days be reckoned a smaller offence. One John Persene
appeared before the Session and confessed that he had been absent from
church for the space of five weeks. For this neglect of ordinances he
was "injoyned to apeir in the public place of repentance and there to be
publicly rebuked, with certificatione that if he be found to be two
Sabbaths together absent fra the church he shall be put in the breggan."
In Sorn parish, too, as well as in Galston, profanation of the Sabbath
was occasionally punished by a lock up in the breggan; but in Sorn the
punishment was inflicted in the orthodox way by a magistrate. The record
bears that in 1698 a Sabbath breaker "was delated by authority of two
magistrates, James Farquhar of Gilmillscroft and Adam Aird of Katarin,
and was by them put in the jougges from the ringing of the first to the
ringing of the third bell, and then "(that is, to use a common but
incorrect phrase, when the church went in) " appeared for rebuke before
the congregation."

Another civil penalty
imposed by Kirk Sessions on delinquents was fines, although, strictly
speaking, it was only the civil magistrate that could legally inflict
and exact the payment of these. But if no magistrate was present in a
Kirk Session, it saved trouble to all parties when the Kirk Session just
stated what the fines were and took them direct from the delinquent's
own hands. In most cases the amount of fine exigible for special
offences was fixed by Act of Parliament, and appointed to be handed over
for pious uses to the Kirk Session of the parish where the offence was
committed. It was not unusual, therefore, for Kirk Sessions to minute,
"mulcted in terms of Act of Parliament" £4 or £2, as the case might be.

It must be admitted,
also, that Kirk Sessions were fond of mulcting and fining, and for a
reason that does them no discredit. The fines went for the good of the
parish, and especially for behoof of the poor/f and at a time when there
was no assessment levied for the poor, and church door collection were
inadequate to meet the wants of the needy, Kirk Sessions were disposed
to take advantage of all lawful means in their power for relief of the
indigent. In 1755, in the days of Mr. Auld, who was a good friend to the
poor, and always on the look-out for their welfare and interest, the
Session of Mauchline minuted that "considering how much vice and
immorality of various kinds abound among us, notwithstanding the many
good laws we have for checking and discouraging the same, and being
sensible that the not putting of the said laws into execution is in a
great measure owing to the negligence and remissness of Kirk Sessions in
discharging their duty, whereby among other evils it comes to pass that
the poor are robbed of their right, and defrauded of that necessary
subsistence which they are entitled to by law, in remedy whereof, the
Session resolve to be more strict in adhering to these laws for the
future, and particularly do hereby enact and ordain, that the full fines
appointed by Act of Parliament, Charles II.,
Par. 1, Sess. 1st, Chap. 38, against offenders specified therein, shall
be exacted by the Kirk Treasurer from each of the said specified
delinquents before they be absolved." Even in 1809, when Mr. Millar,
younger, of Glenlee, proposed the abolition of public rebukes in
Mauchline, except in cases of very gross scandal, he appended to his
motion, and doubtless from charitable motives, that larger fines should
be exacted in the way of discipline. [Among the sins laid by the
Cameronians in 1742 to the charge of the Church of Scotland was "a
virtual sale of indulgences by receiving money payments as a substitute
for ecclesiastical penance." This was not alleged to be a common
practice, but was the practice of the kirk treasurer in Edinburght. (Uurton's
History, viii. 411.) In 1751 a tailor from Riccarton appeared before the
Kirk Session of Galston craving absolution for a sin committed before
his marriage, and "begging to be absolved from the disgrace of a public
appearance, as his wife was dead." The Session allowed absolution after
one appearance in public, "for the peculiar circumstances of the case,
upon his giving a present to the poor," and to that offer the tailor
thankfully agreed.] Every one knows that Kirk Sessions now-a-days are
very glad to be relieved from dealing with cases of scandal, and very
happy to let such cases be disposed of, when it can be done legally, by
neighbouring Parishes. But once it was different, and for the very
intelligible reason that there was then a question of pounds, shillings,
and pence involved in the matter. In 1785 a man applied to the Kirk
Session of Mauchline for leave to go to Sorn to make satisfaction for a
sin he had committed in that Parish. The Session, however, declared
themselves "unanimously of opinion, that the issue of the scandal
belonged to Machline," and they refused to grant the favour craved,
unless the petitioner paid "his penalty to the poor of this Parish."

As might be imagined,
cases sometimes occurred in which the customary and legal fines were
greater than delinquents could afford to pay. In such cases Kirk
Sessions exercised a wise and generous discretion in modifying the
mulct. In 1686, for instance, a man that had been fined in the Kirk
Session of Mauchline in £20 was let off for £\z. Even Mr. Auld sometimes
relaxed his rigorous rule. In 1776, Racer Jess offered half a crown in
payment of her penalty, and "the Session considering her poverty and
that she had got no assistance in maintaining her bastard child, which
the alleged father continues to disown, accepted the same." And for
other reasons than the poverty of a delinquent fines were remitted. Good
conduct on particular occasions was taken into consideration, so that
Kirk Sessions in being a terror to evil doers should also be a praise to
them that do well. In 1671, a man named Johnston had his penalties
discharged altogether by the Kirk Session of Mauchline, because of "some
services done to the Parish at the re-entry of the minister." A promise
of service was also in some instances accepted in lieu of money, as in
Galston in 1640, when a man gave signs of repentance "and promised
staines for bigging of the bridge for his penaltie."

All these instances of
leniency may be regarded as very amiable and commendable, but Kirk
Sessions at times made compromises that are scarcely defensible on the
score of justice. In 1732, a person under fama in Mauchline offered to
pay half a guinea to the poor and stand one day in the place of
repentance, if by that means her scandal would be removed, and the Kirk
Session considering that no guilt had been proven against the woman
accepted the offer. Plainly there should have been guilt either proved
or confessed before a fine was accepted or a rebuke administered, and I
cannot but think, therefore, that the Session was in this instance
guilty of taking undue advantage of amiability. In 1735, an important
personage from Cumnock, who had occasion to give satisfaction to the
Kirk Session of Mauchline, pled that " he was frequently abroad, and
craved therefore to be absolved on his appearing one day, forenoon and
afternoon, before the congregation, and paying a fine of £16 Scots,
otherwise he would pay the ordinary and appear three days.'' It is,
perhaps, owing to the way in which this offer is worded that it has an
ugly look of mingled threats and bribery. The Session probably put the
offer in another way before their minds, for it is stated that, after
reasoning, a vote was taken and the motion to accept was carried. In
1637, the Kirk Session of Galston were petitioned by a delinquent to "licentiat
him to stand in the permitted place in his ordinary habit, and enjoin
him to pey the greater penaltie." In considering this request the
Session minuted a very ingenuous confession that they were sorely in
need of "present moneyie," and they passed a resolution therefore to
accept the offer, and enjoin the payment of 40s. extra, besides the cost
of "ane sheit, quhilk wes gevin to a puir deid bodie."

There was sometimes a
disposition shewn by delinquents to regard the payment of a fine as all
the satisfaction they had to give for an offence. They thought the fine
a complete condonation of the misdeed, and that it inferred removal of
scandal. They did not realise the fact that they were members of two
separate corporations—the State and the Church—and that they had to
answer to the State for crimes, and to the Church for scandals, or in
other words that they were subject to both fines and censures. In 1752,
a farmer named Goudie was cited to appear before the Session of
Mauchline, on a charge of having "clandestinely, and without giving the
least warning of his evil design," knocked down a man in the village by
a stroke on the head, and of having afterwards denied the fact with
imprecations or curses. Mr. Goudie compeared and confessed himself
guilty of the act of assault, but professed to have no recollection of
having uttered any maledictions. "At the same time he entered his
protest against the Session, for meddling in that affair after the Civil
Magistrate had fined him for it, and appealed to the Presbytery, craving
an extract of the process, which was allowed him." The result of his
appeal can easily be conjectured. He got a new wrinkle in Church law
which he was not likely to forget. He was rebuked in the Presbytery, and
his rebuke was ordered to be intimated to the Congregation of Mauchline
the following Sabbath.

There is an old proverb
that prevention is better than cure, and Kirk Sessions long ago were
alive to that fact. They may at times have been more inquisitorial than
was prudent (or would now be prudent), and at other times more rigorous
in their censure than was expedient; but it was always their professed
and doubtless their sincere desire, to repress and restrain sin, and
promote the practice of holiness. They were diligent in warning
therefore as well as in rebuking. In 1696, for instance, the Kirk
Session of Mauchline, "considering what scandalous practices some people
were guilty of, as in particular, frequent absence from church, laying
out cloathes to dry on the Lord's day, and suffering their children to
play together in flocks on the said day, thought it fit that the people
guilty of such practices should be admonished out of the pulpit, and
cautioned against them for the time to come." In 1709 again there is a
minute in the records that "the minister is to be minded next Sabbath to
intimate to all ins in town not to give drink to excess to any upon any
day, and especially to souldiers." Of course it may be presumed that in
the days of Mr. Auld's wakeful ministry the prevention scheme would be
zealously worked. And so it was. In 1782 it is recorded that the Kirk
Session, "taking into consideration the cruel and inhuman custom of
cock-fighting at fasten e'en, [Fasten e'en, the night before Lent,—the
last night on which good cheer was allowed by the Catholics till the
forty days' fast was over,—was in the time of Burns observed by
Presbyterians as a night of extra jollity.] do forbid the same, and
order their officer to take notice to give up the names of such as
transgress ; and particularly, they order the schoolmaster to take care
that none under his charge do provide or bring cocks for that purpose,
and that there be no vacancy in the school that day."

In 1788 the prevalence of
bastardy in the Parish had become the subject of remark and comment.
Burns had risen into fame, and his poems were widely read ; and public
attention was directed to local scandals, whether real or fictitious.
There were not a few people ready to cry out against the hollowness of
religious professions. There were enormous gatherings at communions,
devotional exercises both in public and in private were frequent and
long, and unmistakable zeal on the part of Kirk Sessions was shown to
cleanse the cup and platter of the Church. But still there were a great
many bad coppers in the country, and there was much vice both openly and
secretly practised.

The Kirk Session were not
undisturbed about this. On the contrary, they thought it was a most
humiliating and sorrowful fact, and as was shewn in a previous lecture
they drew up in regard to it a solemn admonition and a stringent
resolution, which they ordered to be publicly read from the pulpit. Two
years before this, they had also ordered a similar admonition and
resolution, in regard to Sabbath breaking, to be intimated. And this
should shew that in dealing with particular persons for breaches of the
Sabbath, the Session of Mauchline were not so much moved by "pique and
malice" as has by some people been supposed and represented. Their
procedure may in some instances have been rigid and unwise, but it was
at least directed without partiality or respect of persons. Their
declaration on Sabbath observance is worthy of quotation, both because
it gives a picture of the times in which Burns lived— possibly an ex
parte and a coloured picture, but still a picture that as students of
these times we cannot leave out of account —and because it shows the
zeal and vigour with which the Kirk Session endeavoured to put down
every form of what they considered unchristian conduct in the parish.
The declaration is dated 23rd April, 1786, and its tenor is as
follows:—"The Kirk Session of Machline are informed that the Lord's day
is grossly profaned in this place by both men and women, particularly
the younger sort, meeting together in parties and cabals after sermon,
and are seen walking and traversing the fields and highways in an
indecent manner on the evening of that holy day. The Session therefore
think it their duty to warn the people in this congregation, young and
old, against the sin of Sabbath-breaking, and earnestly exhort parents
and heads of families to command their children, servants, and all
within their gates, to keep holy the day of the Lord as he has
commanded, and particularly to refrain from the profanation of this holy
day by idly vaguing together and by profane worldly conversation. And
the members of the Session and other heads of families are desired to
take notice of, and inform against, such profaners of the Sabbath, that
they be spoken to privately, or censured, as the Session or Presbytery
shall judge proper." It cannot be doubted that the framers of this
declaration acted on the high principle propounded by the prophet, "Oh
son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel,
therefore if thou wilt not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that
wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at
thine hand. Nevertheless if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from
it, and he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity, but
thy soul will be delivered."

We have now considered
the main questions regarding parochial discipline by Kirk Sessions : the
mode of inquisition adopted, the extent of jurisdiction claimed, and the
censures inflicted by these local courts. As a sequel to these
discussions we have now to enquire what amount of deference was paid to
the authority of Kirk Sessions by the general public long ago.

It is customary to
represent Kirk Sessions as having in olden times lorded over
congregations and parishes with despotic authority. And there is
doubtless some truth in the statement. The Kirk Session, as I said
before, was in a very wide sense of the term the local authority in the
parish. And, as a rule, people were not only subject to the Kirk
Session, but they stood in awe of the Kirk Session. It is the case,
nevertheless, that the mandates and citations of Kirk Sessions were not
in every instance obeyed obsequiously. In 1734 a self-possessed young
woman appeared before the Session of Mauchline in response to a summons,
and on being asked what she considered an impolite question, drew
herself up and "said that time would tell." Instead of taking this
malapertness good humouredly the Session pronounced it contempt of
court, and minuted that they would apply to "the public magistrate," if
the damsel would not shortly give them satisfaction. Three months passed
away and there was no sign of either time telling or of the lady showing
any disposition to satisfy Sessional curiosity. A second summons was
therefore served upon mademoiselle to compear again before the Lords of
the Congregation, but this summons she disregarded altogether. One of
the Elders was thereupon deputed "to speak to the Bailie anent her," and
at a subsequent meeting of Session the Elder reported that the Bailie's
advice was to try her once more with a citation, and if she then failed
to compear, he would interfere magisterially and put "his interloquitor
in execution against her"! About forty years before that occurrence
there was another case of a Parishioner declining to appear before the
Session of Mauchline in answer to citation, and in that case the man was
simply "remitted (or as it should been said 'committed') to the civil
magistrate, because the Session had sufficient evidence of his intention
to delude and evade them." The man, however, who was a reckless slippery
fellow that reverenced nobody, and had not the least regard for his own
word, seems to have eluded and evaded the magistrate also ; for the
Session some months afterwards declared him contumacious, and instructed
Ballochmyle, junior, to report his contumacy to the Sheriff. Kirk
Sessions had also at times to call in the aid of the civil magistrate to
enforce their orders and sentences. In the year 1691 a number of
matrimonial consignations became forfeit in Mauchline. They had never
been deposited. There had only been a bond or a caution given for their
payment, if payment should become necessary. The Session, therefore, had
not the means of executing their sentence of forfeiture by simply
retaining the deposits in their possession. They had to ask cautioners
and accepters of bills to fulfil their engagements, and they found on
the part of these cautioners and bill accepters more reluctance to do
this than might have been expected of honourable men. The Session
accordingly passed two resolutions. One of these had for its object the
prevention of similar defalcations in future, and the tenor of that
resolution was, that neither bond nor caution for consignations would
henceforth be received, but that all persons who had consignations to
make would have to deposit the sums required. The other resolution was
to take steps for the recovery of such consignations as had been already
forfeited, and the tenor of this resolution was, that all "forefaulters
of consignation be summoned before the barronie court, or their
cautioners to be legallie persued, for the recovery of the samine to the
Session." In 1697 another case occurred in which the Session of this
Parish had to invoke the magistrate's assistance in carrying out a
sentence of theirs. A young woman was that year complained of by the
Session, for not keeping her appointment and promise to appear for
rebuke in the public place of repentance, and for "feigning sickness" as
an excuse for her non-appearance. For so doing the Session judged her
contumacious, and instructed the minister to speak to the magistrate
about her. But in this case, and in many similar cases which occurred
from time to time, the Kirk Session might have drawn an obvious
inference and taken a salutary lesson to heart regarding the rigour of
church discipline. To people of the least sensibility a public
compearance was a sore humiliation. It was so sore that they feigned
sickness to avoid it, and perhaps it was not a feigned but a real
sickness that possessed them. They were made to sorrow with a sorrow
that worked death, [How the shame of public humiliation afflicted some
people may be seen from the account of Paul Methven's contrilionin 1566
for dishonouring his cloth by a sin that involved deposition from the
ministry and excommunication. ''He prostrate himself before the haill
brethren in the General Assembly with weeping andhowling." Book of Univ.
Kirk. In his survey of Ayrshire Aiton avers that public penance on the
repentance stool led to a good deal of child murder.] and in the
interests of religion as well as in pity to individual persons, it was
highly expedient that such a form of censure as involved shame and
ridicule more than womanly feelings could bear, should have been
abolished. Another kind of sentence that Kirk Sessions had sometimes to
seek magisterial assistance to carry out, was parochial exile. Kirk
Sessions, as we have seen, were very careful to exclude from the parish
all persons that they thought would not prove respectable parishioners.
People from Lesmahagow or Ecclefechan, or in fact from any place
whatever, near or remote, were not allowed to squat in the parish at
their own sweet wills without producing testimonials of character. The
Session had accordingly to give intruders notice to quit. But where were
the poor creatures to go? They were bidden move to the other side of the
river, and when they did so they were told on the other side to go back
by the way they came. They were thus in a strait betwixt two. They sat
still, therefore, and by no amount of sessional persuasion or sessional
authority would they be induced to rise and walk. The civil magistrate
in these cases was appealed to, and the magistrate issued an
interlocutor which in substance declared (what was very hard), that
people's right of habitation was subject to ecclesiastical permission.

Delinquents had sometimes
the hardihood to show positive insolence to the high authority of the
Kirk Session. [In 1645 there was a woman brought before the Session of
Fen wick for "upbraiding of the Session from off the public place of
repentance, when she should have made confession of her fault." The
following year another offender in the same place was called to book for
"unbeseeming speeches on the place of repentance," and in 1649 several
people were rebuked for "extenuating their fault on the place of
repentance." In Galston, in 1640, one John Wylie, who had confessed that
"he gave his wyff a shott with his hand upon ye Sabbath day," came up
for penance, but "the said John, upon the high place, argued with the
minister, speaking something of the gentlemen and noblemen of the paroch,
and of new toyes, quhilk could not be cleirlie understood." The said
John was therefore ordained to come back next Sabbath to the same place,
and "there to confess and purge himself, that he spak nothing of the
noblemen and gentlemen of the paroch in raising of new toyes, and that
if he spak onie thing of them he did it out of a rash humour, not
knowing what he said, and so craved God and them forgiveness." A similar
case of insolence occurred in Galston in 1693.]

In 1732 the officer
reported to the Session of Mauchline that on his citing a parishioner to
appear before her betters she saucily said to him that "she would not go
the length of her foot.'' And grosser cases of insolence than that
sometimes occurred. The sectarian soldiers of Cromwell, we are told,
used, when in Scotland, to shew their contempt for Presbyterian
discipline by pulling down repentance stools or mounting them for sport
when they went to church. And similar feats have been heard of in times
much less distant. Many a repentance stool has been maimed and
mutilated, dislocated and destroyed, cast down and trampled on, both in
mirth and wrath, by people that bore it a grudge for no greater offence
than offering them a seat when they were bidden stand before the
congregation. In our own Parish Records there is a case of this sort
reported. In 1675 deposition was made to the Session by John Campbell
that one Sunday about four in the morning he was sent for to the house
of Matthew Campbell, a vintner, and on going there he found three men
sitting bareheaded. On making inquiry he learned that their bonnets had
been poinded for payment of their potations. John, in a fit of
generosity which he afterwards had cause to regret, advanced them a
mark-piece to clear their account and recover their caps. The three
liberated lads in their gratitude to John for his generosity escorted
him home with midnight honours: and when his door was opened John
politely thanked his friends, and wished them good morning and a
pleasant walk to their respective' lodgings. The revellers, however, in
their maudlin affection were loath to part, and requested admittance
into John's house. Such a dear amiable man too was John that he would
fain have let them in, but his better half resented such an untimeous
invasion of super exhilarated strangers, and told them it was late and
her husband must go to his bed. "For this cause," says the minute of
Kirk Session, "one of the three men cast down his benefactor at his own
door," and then the whole party, staggering like landsmen aboard a
schooner in a hurricane, made their way arm-in-arm for Netherplace. The
story reached the ears of the Kirk rulers, and the roy-sterers being
found guilty both of drunkenness and Sabbath breaking, were ordered to
be publicly rebuked. The day for rebuke arrived and the three men, come
to their sober senses, made their appearance at the place appointed. But
sobriety does not bring with it every other form of good behaviour, nor
does it by any means always put a man in a proper and civil frame of
mind. Instead of shewing signs of penitence and humiliation, these
sobered liquorers, say the Records, "did strive all the time to break
the stools whereon they stood, and which accordingly they did." A most
unchristian miscarriage surely! And that was just what the Session
called this act of sacrilegious vandalism. But the Session took care
that the three scorners should not be allowed to think they had scored a
parochial triumph by their impudence, or that by playing pranks at the
place of repentance people might laugh the pains out of penance. For
attempting to cast ridicule on public reproof, the three delinquents
were subjected to the greater penalty of lesser excommunication, and
were left to learn at leisure, by the inconvenience of seclusion from
Christian society, the folly as well as sin of poking fun at
ecclesiastical authority. [Curate Calder tells a story which is meant to
be marvellous, and may perhaps be only a fabrication, about a
presumptuous fellow who went to the repentance stool and "behaved liker
a light fool than a penitent sinner, for he powdered his wig and put on
his new clothes, and almost stared the minister out of countenance." A
much more astonishing thing than that, however, happened at Cumnock in
1643. A day of solemn humiliation had been appointed by either the
Presbytery or the General Assembly, and one of the Elders in Cumnock
chose to "misregard" it. For that offence he was ordered to submit to
public rebuke, but instead of either submitting humbly to admonition or
taking a resolute stand on some intelligible ground of principle against
the sentence of the Session, he went to the " publict place of
repentance with his head covered and with his sword about him!" His
conduct was brought under the notice of the Presbytery at a Presbyterial
visitation of the Parish, and for his folly and hardihood he was
"suspended from the office of Eldership until the entry of a new
minister or a new visitation." Not a very hard sentence for contemptuous
conduct by one that was set for an example to the flock,]

Exhibitions of temper too
were occasionally witnessed in the Kirk Session. In 1682 a credulous
excitable man in this Parish had been taunted in jest by one of the
Elders in a way that should have subjected the Elder to censure. Taking
in earnest what was said in jest, the man flared up in an instant,
reviled the Elder for all that was unmentionable, and swore by his Maker
that he would not rest till he made the Elder's blood as cold as clay.
For this outburst of foolish passion the man was summoned before the
Session, and if he could only have restrained himself so far as to
compear peaceably and tell his story correctly he would doubtless have
received a fair hearing and a just sentence. But he was beside himself
with rage, and he came to the Session like a man possessed with demons.
Instead of waiting outside among the tombs, as the custom was, till he
was called into the church, he went up to the door and thundered there
as if he had come with fire and sword to take over the premises. And
when at length he got admittance into the church, he bellowed like a
madman, called the Elder who had insulted him a pestilent fellow, and
swore in high terms that he would stand to every word he had previously
said. The sequel is not worth mentioning, for the fact that I am at
present concerned in shewing is merely that Kirk Sessions were not
regarded with such reverence that they were always secure against acts
of insolence. Even Mr. Auld, austere and authoritative, and every inch a
minister as he was, did not escape an occasional insult in his Parish
consistory. In 1784 the bellman was summoned before the Session for
exacting some small charges he was not entitled to make. The bellman,
however, thought he was justified in doing what he had done, and that he
was very ill-used in being called in question for his conduct. Smarting
under the pain of injured innocence, he incautiously let drop an oath in
the audience of the Session. For that act of irreverence he was there
and then rebuked. But the rebuke inflamed his resentment all the more,
and a few weeks later at a meeting of Session he was again complained of
for defaming the minister, and calling him a villain, with an adjective
before it, the precise meaning of which is best known to theologians.

It is to be observed,
however, that instances of contempt and insubordination to the Kirk
Session's authority occurred only now and again, and that as a rule the
Kirk Session enjoyed both the respect and the confidence of the people.
One of the best proofs of this is the fact that fines were promptly paid
by delinquents, although the legality of these fines might often have
been contested. But delinquents, generally, and almost universally, felt
that Kirk Sessions in administering discipline acted justly and with a
view to public good, and offenders acquiesced accordingly in the
sentences of Kirk Sessions when guilt was not disputed.

Seeing then that Kirk
Sessions were in olden times so zealous both in the prevention and the
repression of sin, and that they were armed with such large powers both
for inquisition and punishment, it may now be asked what was the general
state of morality over Scotland a hundred or two hundred years ago,
compared with what it is at the present time.

We often hear it said at
the present day that the people of Scotland are drinking themselves to
death. And there doubtless is a great deal of drunkenness in the
country. But it is now looked down upon. On the other hand drunkenness a
hundred years ago was regarded as a jovial and gentlemanly thing, and it
was not principle but poverty that restrained the masses from going to
the same excesses as the gentry. In his traditions of Edinburgh Dr.
Chambers says that "in the early part of last century rigour was in the
ascendant in Scotland, but the free and easy comprised a considerable
minority who kept alive the flame of conviviality with no small degree
of success. In the latter half of the century—a dissolute era all over
civilised Europe—the minority became the majority, and the
characteristic sobriety of the nation's manners was only traceable in
certain portions of society. In Edinburgh seventy years ago (which would
be about 1780) intemperance was the rule to such a degree that exception
could hardly be said to exist."

The newspaper record of
divorces at the present day reveals an amount of domestic immorality and
misery that would have been thought incredible had it not been brought
to light. But old church registers have stories to tell quite as
startling. In 1644, when the so-called Second Reformation was in its
full glory, no fewer than thirteen couples appeared in sackcloth before
the Presbytery of Ayr for literal breaches of the seventh commandment,
and in 1643 there were at least eleven couples that for the like cause
appeared before the same court in the like habit. What is still more
astonishing, it was reported to the Presbytery of Ayr in 1690 that "a
public brothel house was kept at Dalmellington." It may be presumed,
however, that this social nuisance and source of moral corruption was
but of brief continuance, for it is added in the records that the
Presbytery appointed the minister of the parish "to write to the
President for suppressing it." [By the old laws of Scotland adultery was
punishable with death, and in a note to Creech's letters it is said that
as recently as 1694 a man was hanged in Edinburgh for adultery, and his
paramour was beheaded. In 1763, says Creech, the sin was very rare, and
the sinner was boycotted ; in 1783 the sin was not uncommon in the
Metropolis, and the sinner was received in society.]

The accounts of female
termagancy in old records read very much like good jokes now, and we are
amused to hear of women brought before magistrates for stoning men to
the effusion of their blood and chasing them into their own houses. In
point of fact, however, such incidents imply a fearful state of
Amazonianism at the time they occurred, and few lovers of antiquity
would care for a return of such ancient manners in Scotland.

But, to limit our
enquiry, and come nearer home, let us consider what our own Session
Records have to say about the state of morality in Mauchline parish at
different dates. We may pass over all general statements made by the
Kirk Session from time to time, because these only indicate opinions and
are apt to be either over or under coloured, according to the spiritual
temperament of those that penned them. But "facts are chiels that winna
ding." Let us look then at some authentic facts bearing on the state of
Parochial morality at different periods, and let us begin with the
oldest period of which we have any extant Parochial record—the times of
the covenants and the persecutions.

We are in the way of
looking back to the Covenant times as to times that were specially
distinguished for purity and piety, and were sanctified to an unusual
degree by spiritual refreshing The Drumfork case, however, which has
already been alluded to, shews that corruption and profanity,
drunkenness and devilry, were not in the days of Charles
II. confined to royal courts and London
society, but were to be found as well in the country districts of
Ayrshire, in the houses of farmers and bonnet lairds. And that the
Drumfork squabble was not an exceptional manifestation of the life of
that period, is made plain by another case which came before the Session
of Mauch-line the same year, viz., in 1673. This was a case in which two
men named Mershall, presumably brothers, were delated for fighting with
and cursing each other. There would have been nothing strange in that,
if the men had been a pair of village waifs, flushed by drink. But the
men were men of some account. The one was a merchant and the other was a
" nottar," who held the public office of Council Clerk ; and yet they
had so little regard for decency, so little sense of dignity, and so
little consideration of public opinion, not to say of brotherly
relationship and Christian duty, that after falling out on some matter,
they proceeded like a pair of modern roughs to settle their differences
with fisticuffs and profanation. And not only so, but the fight was
witnessed by a small and select group of spectators without a word of
remonstrance. James Peathin and John Jamie both deponed to the Session
that they saw the two brother burgesses, neither of them publicans
albeit both of them sinners, sparring in a field, and not by way of
friendly scientific contest, but in bona fide bloody conflict, beating
and buffeting each other till failing strength or failing eyesight put
an end to the melee. But, said Mr. Peathin, with the view of shewing
that in this blackguardly business there was nothing unbecoming
gentlemen or Christians or even Covenanters, "I don't remember hearing
any particular oaths." "I heard the merchant," said Mr. Jamie, "swear by
his Maker once—but that was all." The bailie of the burgh, John
Richmond, was another spectator of the combat, and he deponed that he
heard swearing on both sides, and yet, magistrate though he was, the
resident justice in the place, he did not think proper to interfere with
the disputants ; he looked on till he saw the end, smoked his pipe (very
likely), and tapped out the dottle on his thumb nail without saying a
word,—simply took mental note of what passed, and prepared himself to
give evidence when called upon. Two elders were, "in virtue of their
former oath," examined regarding the public character of the combatants,
and these elders deponed that there was no use in trying to whitewash
the delinquents, as if their recent outbreak were something exceptional,
and not in keeping with the usual tenor of their lives, for despite
their social position they were, both by habit and repute, ordinary
swearers. This shews what Mauchline was, and what magistracy in
Mauchline was, two hundred years ago.

And what was Mauchline
one hundred years ago? It had an unhappy notoriety, we have seen, for
one form of scandal. But what was the general state of moral conduct,
moral feeling, and moral thought at that date? Were the people sober,
peaceful, and industrious, or the reverse? It is of course only the
misdeeds of the people that arc shewn in Session Records. The virtues of
the people, save in respect of liberality at collections and attendance
at communions, are not brought out there. But what appears in the
Session Records shews beyond possibility of dispute that although the
population of the parish was much less than it is now, and more
agricultural, the people were nevertheless rougher, coarser grained,
more insubordinate and more uncivilised than they are at the present
day. Mr. Auld, in his account of the parish, written about 1790, laments
the loss of its Burghal Charter, and hence of its village magistrate ;
because he says there is a great deal of disorderly and riotous conduct
that needs to be repressed. And the Session Records confirm Mr. Auld's
statement. For although it is true that one swallow does not make
summer, nor the presence of one lawless fellow in a parish prove that
the whole parish is turbulent, we may yet draw general inferences from
particular cases of misconduct. And the instances of turbulent behaviour
that I shall now give, will probably satisfy any one who is willing to
be convinced by evidence, that Mauchlinc a hundred years ago was not a
Paradise of cither innocence or Christian virtue.

Tradesmen, who in
Ayrshire are commonly called merchants, might, as I have said before, be
expected from their social position to be favourable specimens of
village manners. If merchants are found pestilent fellows, what must we
not suppose people inferior in the social scale to be. Well, in 1771,
one of the merchants of Mauchline, whose name need not be given, was
libelled by the Kirk Session for two very grave offences. He was accused
of "uttering and propagating erroneous opinions contrary to the word of
God." He was accused also of " transgressing the second table of the
moral law by beating, bruising, and defaming his neighbour." His chief
heresies were a denial of the doctrine of original sin and a refusal to
acknowledge some parts of the Scripture as the word of God. [There is a
very remarkable likeness in the terms of this libel against the
Mauchline merchant in 1771 to what is said about "Goudie's Bible" in the
history of Kilmarnock: "Goudie, terror o' the Whigs, published Essays on
various important subjects, moral and divine, being an attempt to
distinguish true from false Religion. This book was nicknamed Goudie's
Bible, and set forth peculiar views respecting original sin and
particular portions of Scripture." Goudie's book, however, was not
published till 1780, whereas the Mauchline merchant was libelled for
heresy in 1771.] But although this merchant alleged himself to be
untainted by original sin and professed to be wise above what was
written, the terms of the libel served upon him, and which were proved
against him, will shew that his practical code of morals was neither
holy nor harmless, neither super-refined nor super-excellent in wisdom.
After reciting the heresies he had vented, the libel proceeds to say
:—"You did also in one or other of the months of May, June, or July,
1769, beat and bruise Henry Richmond in Mauchline to the danger of his
life, according to proof led against you in the Sheriff Court of Ayr.
You did again in one or other of the months of May, June, or July, 1770,
attack James Lamie, merchant in Mauchline, at or near Hunter's yeards,
and by the assistance of your son William did throw down the said James
Lamie, and might have murdered him, had he not been relieved by some
people who came thither. After that, you and your foresaid son did at
Henry Richmond's midden throw the said James Lamie into the middenstead
or hole, and abuse him in the dirt and might have put an end to his life
had he not been again relieved. Lastly, when James Lamie told you that
your horse was tethered on his possession of Hunter's yeards, as the
marches had been pointed out by several witnesses, you said that some of
the witnesses were damned already, and that if James Lamie lived he
would see them all damned in a year or two, for they were like Ahab's
witnesses hired and perjured." Of course we cannot suppose that all the
merchants in the village were of a piece with this cross-grained and
addle-headed unbeliever, but the fact that any well-to-do man, with a
reputation to depend upon, could be found acting as this libelled madcap
did, shews that there was very little surrounding culture and very
little force of educated public opinion to which people in Mauchline
felt themselves amenable.

A few years later,
namely, in 1777, the Session were informed that a journeyman blacksmith
in the village had been guilty of a series of outrages and acts of
devilry which are thus recited : First, about the time of the June fair
in 1776 he threatened to murder his wife, and was only prevented from
doing so by the kirk officer's coming to her rescue: secondly, at
Martinmas thereafter, he threatened to murder the kirk officer for
interfering between him and his wife in their domestic quarrels :
thirdly, about Ware last, he fought his cock with the minister's cock on
a Sabbath day and during the time of divine service : and fourthly, at
the Yule fair last, he took a hammer from the smithy, in order, as he
said, to knock down all that came in his way, and he also ran through
the streets with an open knife, swearing that he would rip up every man,
woman, and child he met. This blacksmith may be considered as a sample
of the village rowdy, and although rowdyism is personal and eccentric,
not uniform and typical, his conduct will at least go a long way in
proving that rowdyism in 1777 was more lawless and savage than it is
now-a-days in small rural towns.

There is only one other
illustration that I shall give of the worst forms of village life in
Mauchline about a hundred years ago, and it may have interest as bearing
upon one, at least, if not on two, of the poems of Burns. Among the
masterpieces of the poet, the cantata entitled the Jolly Beggars is
universally admitted to have a conspicuous place. The subject of the
poem is in one sense repulsive. The characters depicted are the lowest
of the low and the vilest of the vile, but they are delineated with
inimitable power. Such as they were, the beggars and their chums are set
before us ; and such a scene of rollicking mirth, boisterous revelry,
and audacious profanity, lit up here and there with outbursts of the
rarest eloquence and highest patriotism, as well as broadest humour and
liveliest wit, has seldom been turned into shape by poet's pen. One of
the most outstanding figures in the poem is a tozie drab of consummate
impudence and shameless morals. That person, whoever she was, we must
suppose was not a fictitious but a real character, whose lewd conduct
the poet witnessed, and whose wanton words the poet heard. It may be
impossible to identify her with any person of whom we have any record,
but the person referred to in the minute of Session I am about to quote,
might, so far as character went, have been the drab that sat for the
portrait of the unblushing virago, who was not ashamed to tell that she
had no remembrance of an innocent maidenhood. And in speaking for the
moment somewhat harshly of this abandoned woman, or rather poor wretched
creature, we may well ask what it is but Divine grace, in the shape of a
more favoured outward lot and more civilising surroundings, that has
made any of ourselves to differ from her. She was, as she tells us, a
child of misfortune, and she might have said, as a poet of no mean
order, who was also one of society's illegitimates, and who fell into
evil habits of life, sadly said of himself—

But to return to the
cantata and the drab. The date of the minute will shew that the person
mentioned therein might have been, and probably was, in Poosie Nansie's
house the night in which Burns and his friend were admitted to see and
join in the beggars' carousals. The poem was written in 1785, that is in
the autumn of 1785, "when lyart leaves bestrewed the yird," and " infant
frosts began to bite." The date of the minute is the 6th March, 1786,
and the woman mentioned in the minute is said to have been for more than
sir months previous entertained by George Gibson and by another person
called Black, who seems to have kept a house similar to Gibson's. But if
there be any doubt about this woman's having been the tozie drab of the
cantata, there can be no doubt of her having been the "jurr" referred to
in Adam Armour's prayer. The scandalous conduct of this "jurr," as we
know, led to a public demonstration of feeling in the village, in which
demonstration Adam Armour took a prominent part, and for so doing was
brought into trouble. Burns was ever ready to give a jocular turn to any
mishap that befell his friends, and he accordingly wrote, under the
title of "Adam Armour's Prayer," a satirical poem, in which he invoked
the pains of everlasting torment on Adam's persecutors—"black Geordie,"
who was George Gibson, and his spouse, "auld drunken Nanse," who was
Agnes Ronald. [In the admirable edition of Burns's poems published by
Mr. Paterson, the Adam Armour of the prayer is said to have been in no
way related to Jean Armour's family. The representatives of Jean's
family tell me that they never heard of any Adam Armour in Mauchline in
the days of Burns, except Jean's brother. In the Baptismal and Burial
Registers of Mauchline Parish there is no trace of the birth of any Adam
Armour in the parish between 1730 and 1786, except Jean's brother, who
was born in February, 1771 ; and there is no trace of the death of any
Adam Armour in the parish between 1786 and 1820. Adam Armour, Jean's
brother, was just such a fellow as would be sure to be in a village row.
He was fond of fun and mischief to the end of his days, and many queer
stories are told of him. He was rather under middle size, but his being
only fifteen years old in 1786 explains how he is called in the poem
"little," and "scarce as lang's a guid kail whittle." In the edition of
Burns's poems published in 1842 by Virtue, London, the editor, Allan
Cunningham, states that he got the verses from Adam Armour, Jean's
brother, and that Adam told him the circumstances in which the prayer
originated.] The minute is interesting, therefore, as bearing on points
of literary history, besides giving a picture of Mauchline town and
Mauchline life a hundred years ago. Its date is 6th March, 1786, and its
tenor is as follows:—"The members of the Kirk Session having seen a
petition signed by the inhabitants of Machlin, to be presented to the
Honble. Justices for preserving the peace of this place, do unanimously
concur in the same, and beg leave to add the following particulars—That
there is a vagrant woman called Agnes Wilson, of bad fame in the parish
and places whence she came, who for more than six months past has been
haunted and entertained by Elizabeth Black and George Gibson—That the
bad reputation of this woman, as being lewd and immoral in her
practices, has been the occasion of a late disturbance in this place,
which the Session greatly disapprove of and resolve to inquire into—
That it is the opinion of the Session that if this woman be allowed to
continue here it will tend much to corrupt the morals of the youth and
to disturb the peace of the whole inhabitants—That in these
circumstances the Session think it their duty, in regard there is no
magistrate in the place, to apply to the Honble. Justices to get the
said woman removed —Lastly, that George Gibson and Elizabeth Black, who
haunt and entertain in their houses such vagrant persons of suspicious
and bad characters, may be laid under proper restrictions and obliged to
secure and maintain the peace and safety of the neighbourhood under such
legal penalties as to the honourable court shall appear relevant."

Looking then to the facts
which these extracts reveal, we cannot doubt that two hundred years ago,
and even one hundred years ago, there were in Mauchline parish elements
of disorder and turbulence that are happily unknown at the present day.
Whether there were more vice and secret sin is another matter, which no
man that can't see through a millstone need attempt to discover. But it
is clear that long ago the people of this parish were ruder, rougher,
and coarser than they are now, and it is to be hoped that a hundred
years hence the parish minister will be able to tell a parish audience
that the progress noted from 1684 to 1784 and from 1784 to 1884 has been
continued in an increasing ratio to 1984. The poet laureate has said in
words which have long since become hackneyed by frequent use,

"That through the ages one
increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns."

I would add, that the
hearts and the habits of men, and the conditions and forms of human life
are, like ripening fruit, all meliorating, too, with the same solar
procession.

But to what has progress
in civilization and good order been due in time past, and what is it
that inspires us with hope for the continuance of that progress in time
coming? All social progress is effected by social forces, and these
forces are of two kinds—educative and repressive. The Church and Kirk
Sessions in olden times made use of both forces to the best ot their
judgment and the best of their means. The Church furnished pastors and
doctors, ministers and readers, to instruct the people in the knowledge
of religious truth. Aided by the Kirk Sessions of particular parishes
the Church also set up schools for the instruction of youthhead, long
before the State acknowledged responsibility for the education of the
young. And the Church and Kirk Sessions were no less zealous in
attempting to keep down disorders, and restrain vice and immoralities.
It was for these ends that a rigid discipline was instituted and
executed. The lawless and the ungodly were rebuked and censured,
ostracised from society and suspended from the enjoyment of valued
privileges, fined and jogged, made to go mourning in sackcloth, and
subscribe bands of good behaviour.

It is to the use of
similar forces that we still look for all social improvement. The
educative forces are much stronger to-day than they were either one
hundred or two hundred years ago Not only is school attendance made
compulsory on all children, but there is a public opinion of such
strength created by the diffusion of periodical literature that few men
now-a-days dare to outrage society by the freaks and pranks, high jinks
and low orgies, that were once commonly practised with impunity and
without shame. And it is to the growth and culture of this public
opinion that we must mainly look for the extirpation of some vices that
still infest the land, such as profane swearing and the nasty calumnies
of low correspondents in low newspapers. And not only are the educative
forces stronger to-day than they once were, but the repressive forces
are stronger also. The modes of repression are changed, and changed for
the better. It is true that Church discipline is relaxed. But civil
government is much firmer, and a system of rural police has been
established, which for vigilance, inquisition, and probation of crime,
far surpasses the Kirk Session in its palmiest days. When Mr. Auld wrote
his account of the parish, nearly a hundred years ago, he expressed his
sorrow that the old charter of the burgh had been destroyed, and
consequently that the people of the town had lost their ancient right of
choosing magistrates. "This," he says, "is much to be regretted, as that
privilege, if properly exercised, might contribute much to the public
good by checking riots and disorders which are at present too frequent."
But in truth what was wanted in Mauchline a hundred years ago was not so
much a resident magistrate as a resident policeman. In 1673 Mauchline
had the full benefit of a burghal charter, and she enjoyed the services
of a magistrate freely chosen by her own burgesses. But the magistrate
was a man of like passions as the people. He stood and looked at the
town clerk pounding a merchant, and never tried to save the weaker
brother. A policeman would have done better. He would have said to the
pugilists, "Arcades ambo, you are both my prisoners, and no matter
which, if either, of you is in the right, you must settle your disputes
according to the laws of a civilised country." And so, when we compare
past times with present times, we must keep in mind that there is one
potent cause of order in modern society that was unknown in rural
districts till the second quarter of the present century. No one will
say or suppose that it is in the power of a policeman to make men good
and virtuous, but every one must know and see that a policeman can do,
and actually does, a great deal by his presence and his note-book, his
authority and his hand-cuffs, to make a community orderly and quiet. All
honour, then, to the policeman for his work's sake. Repressive
legislation, too, has within the last few years done much, and in years
to come may do still more, to promote peace and sobriety. Publicans are
now compelled to close their premises before men have had time to be
well drunken, and that is no small gain to the cause of order; and
legislators will doubtless be guided by sound considerations in
determining how much farther, repression should be carried for the
public weal. We must neither be bugbeared nor bamboozled with words and
their associations. Repression is a word that sounds harsh, and freedom
is a word that takes the heart and the imagination by storm. But it must
be remembered that unrepressed rowdyism means rampant terrorism, and
unrestricted freedom is unmitigated tyranny—power to the strong to do as
they please with the weak. Side by side, therefore, we should hope to
see educative and repressive forces at work, public opinion growing
daily more enlightened and more potent, and restraints imposed wherever
they are clearly and loudly called for—and then we may feel confident
for the future—confident that society will, generation after generation,
become more pure and peaceful, more virtuous and more happy.

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